Cage a Trois
by clockwork starlight
Summary: Threesome fic, Sasuke x Hinata x Neji.  Birthday present to juliagulia1017.  Arranging a marriage with several twists, not for small children, dogs or the easily squicked.
1. Chapter 1

Birthday fic for **juliagulia1017**. Because she's awesome and we should get lunch together again some time.

A note on the title-

Ménage a trois: (French) household of three.

I'm sure you can guess where this is going. If you can't, I'm afraid I have to award you nil on the points and a lot on the fail. Guess what, cage is cage in French. I asked. I don't own jack, but looking at what I've gone and done, I think that that's almost a shame.

* * *

Cage a trois 

You don't normally put snakes in cages. If you're careless, a sinuous twist and your serpent has slithered the coop and is probably hiding in your shoes. But maybe that's an incorrect analogy. He's not a snake, he's a _ninja_, and this is not a cage, it's a house of paper and watchful eyes. A house of age and esteem and propriety. A house where his every move is under scrutiny. Where the residents move in soft susurrations of cloth, and talk in formal tones as befits them. Where he can be in the fucking bathroom, and yes the guard will be politely looking away but that doesn't make a fucking difference, now does it? Where everything is ice; their eyes, their demeanor, they've even started on him, freezing all but the barest minimum of his chakra. They're working on his attitude as well, but that fire burns too hot.

He can't complain though; they feed him, clothe him, occasionally they train with him. Every thing he does has an audience of a hundred pairs of eyes, and lingering in the still air of a peaceful estate is the threat that he wouldn't feel the blow that kills him. They've kept him in a permanent state of unbalanced vulnerability. He knows it's for their protection, but some times he wonders if it's not also for their pride.

They didn't know where to put him at first. The only heir to the Uchiha, but a traitor, and perhaps worst of all, a walking mass of hormones. He didn't bother to correct that label. If they would keep the rabid she wolves at bay for him, he didn't need to mention just how annoying he thought they were to begin with.

He rooms with Hyuuga 'fucking genius' Neji, and as far away from the Main House daughters as they can put him without dumping him in Branch House quarters. The venerable House of Hyuuga keeps its formalities and hierarchies, and he can safely call them batty in the privacy of his mind. As if somehow living in _this_ room fulfills the delicate balance of his name and his actions. Watched by silvered hawk eyes, caged by delicately curving talons; this is all that remains of the Uchiha.

-----

You don't keep two predators in the same cage, however tame you think you have made them. One bound by blood, the other by chains, and the only thing to take it out on is the other. He protects one cousin, babysits the other, and now they wish him to hold the leash on this one too.

They didn't give him a collar, something he could feel around his neck and hate. Rather, the medics went in to heal him, and while they were there left a circle of characters that ate chakra at the source. So now, when the last Uchiha stands before the mirror and thinks about why he is standing in a paper prison, he has to turn his hate toward himself. Neji sees him do it often enough, eyes closed, hair waterlogged, steam condensing on skin fair enough to be his own. It's cold comfort, but Neji knows now that his lot in life could be worse.

Some days, being the Hyuuga genius just isn't worth it.

-----

You don't put two men with bad blood between them in the same room. Even if they are in essence complete strangers. Once upon a time, they were comrades, and then they were enemies, but they were never acquaintances or friends and now they are expected to be roommates. In a house full of eyes and private lives, how do they expect him to be happy? The glaringly obvious answer is that they don't, but she can't believe they would tempt fate yet again by planting ill will deliberately. The Hyuuga, of all people, should realize there are ways to overcome fate and the lines they draw. She looks at herself in the mirror, silver eyes on silvered glass, and has to remind herself of her station. She peers into her closets and looks for something relatively normal.

She wants to help, as much as she is able. So she calls Ino and Sakura and asks if she can meet them for lunch.

-----

They've got a new toy; a piece you discover in the corner of the board and didn't realize was your own. Or maybe that's not the right analogy. The last Uchiha is one of those _geisha_ dolls with their dull eyes and blood red lips. Something you take with thanks, and do nothing with but put somewhere visible and maintain subtly. Hanabi hears a lot of things, as the second daughter she holds power without the bindings they place on her sister. She must behave as befits a Hyuuga, but the Clan does not rest on her small, sloped shoulders. Behaving as befits a Hyuuga, to her, means knowing everything. So she uses her eyes and her ears and the little grey kitten Hinata gave her and contrives to be in places at times where she can see and hear everything she thinks she needs to. So she's heard that when he was small, he didn't like girls. And she's heard that maybe he's still like that. And she understands that there might be another reason they stuck him with Neji. After all, Neji's hair is prettier than hers.

* * *

The girl is more than a match for him. She is small and fast and she doesn't have a spiraling seal below her sternum sucking away nearly all of her power. Even _taijutsu_ only has left him wrung; every time he attacks she counters and his hand stings, every time he can manage to block he can feel his strength yield and his body trembles at the impact of a little girl who only just made _genin_. 

She steps on his foot and tells him that she trained at home for years prior to attending the Academy. Before he is comforted she adds that she knows a few _genin_ that he _might_ land a real hit on if he wants.

She is pulled away by the plume of her hair before he can attack recklessly again.

"Look Hanabi, the oranges are finally ready." Hinata's soft query distracts the girl for him. "Uchiha-san, would you like one?"

He lets her hand him the best one she can find and watches her mince toward the kitchen. He turns at the sucking sound of the second daughter removing her thumb from the fruit before peeling the rind into a twisted flower. She looks up at him, and unabashedly licks her fingers, indifferent to her manners and his presence. She turns back to her citrus long before he walks away, still holding his orange.

They pierce him with their gaze for more reasons than the spoken. They don't trust him, and they fear him when they know they shouldn't, and he doesn't belong here. He can feel _byakugan_ eyes on him, boring holes into his head, dissecting his orange for anything that might reveal a dastardly scheme to turn on the House of Hyuuga, anything that will let them remove him from their pristine white halls.

* * *

He's got the most boring roommate in the world. He might even almost have preferred to have Naruto sleeping two feet from him. Naruto at least would be incapable of going an entire night, silently waiting for unnatural movement, observing the dark. Sasuke traces the same silhouetted branch through the paper each night, and tries to think. Sasuke has become an expert at reading nuances. His father had maybe three expressions for his entire life; his first teacher hid his face behind a mask and a porn novel; his next… had twenty different ways of saying the word 'game' and despite very few syllables in the language requiring one's tongue to leave one's mouth, Orochimaru always managed it, and sometimes even that was an indication of which of the hundreds he meant at any given time. 

So he has been watching the Hyuuga long enough to think he can understand them.

This whole thing is just some sick test of loyalty; Sasuke to Konoha, Neji to the Hyuuga. Neji has to make sure Sasuke doesn't kill anyone, and hold himself back from killing Sasuke. Sasuke thinks Neji has the easier part of it. All he can do is live day to day here, and try not to step on too many Hyuuga idiocies.

The Heiress is trying to get her cousin to accept how much she relies on him, while her cousin can barely hide how hard he gets just being in the same room. Sasuke thinks Neji might be fully aware of how much Sasuke notices, for he is not in the habit of underestimating his opponents, not after having his ass handed to him by the dead last dingbat. She has hero-worship in her eyes when she looks at her cousin, and maybe part of that is her appreciation of how generous time and training are to a _nin_ who practices regularly. She can't help it, can she, having been forcibly pulled from active duty.

But she has the support of the _shinobi_; she went to school with the sons and daughters of the _ninja_ clans, and the secondary house of Hyuuga are the only ones on the rosters, the only ones given the chance of dying outside the safety of the village. Her skills are no longer as important as her diplomacy, and so better fighters are given the task of protecting the Hyuuga secrets. He doesn't need to be a genius to know what the looks he is given mean. The submissive little Heiress would be a match for the last Uchiha, but what to do about the progeny? He can read it in their gaze as easily as they can read the pattern binding him. Uchiha is almost as good as marrying back into the family, and the Hokage won't bitch nearly as much about inbreeding. And Sasuke's genes have talent scrawled all over them. And he was bound and determined to repopulate his own clan…

He can hear the calculations in their heads, clicking like beads on an abacus, and he thinks maybe this is why Itachi killed an entire ninja family.

* * *

Even so, they don't like him near the daughters of the Main House. They don't like him trading barbs with Hanabi; they don't like him scowling at her while she laughs at him for no reason at all. But they really dislike how he allows Hinata to go out of her way for him. She is too compassionate by far, and he is learning to tolerate her shy kindnesses, because they are the only ones he has. He has heard Ino and Sakura laughing outside the estate several times, and always Hinata darts away with an apologetic wave, dressed in clothes that might be considered normal. 

Today is the same; she has gone out for lunch with her friends, leaving the Hyuuga homestead a little colder, a little more blatantly hostile. He asks Neji, who is trying to repair a miniscule pair of _zori_, what stick his family has up its collective ass.

"For someone who doesn't make a good puppet, you're not very aware of your surroundings, are you?" Neji sets aside the pink fabric with some relief. "If you wooed her, and she accepted, the balance of influence would fall further to forces outside the Hyuuga. Make no mistake, you would be part of the Hyuuga whether you liked it or not, and if you ever get around to reviving your Clan, you would be better off not annoying us. We are immediately wary of anyone Hinata might express interest in."

"More than half of your family thinks I'm gay."

"Unlike me, they also don't believe you're an idiot. Even if you were, are you so emotional that your personal preference would stop you from courting power?"

"The power in question wouldn't know courtship if it bit her where her legs meet her back." Sasuke picks up one shoe, _hanao_ twisted and frayed but otherwise pristine. "What, she trip over your sexual frustration?"

Neji is refusing to acknowledge the Uchiha's jabs, but Sasuke doesn't need permission to needle him.

"The power in question can't even tell her cousin is obsessed with her," he mutters, tossing the shoe to the floor as he stands.

* * *

Hinata returns, expression as close to giddy as a Hyuuga's can get. She offers him a package, and it's like a weight is lifted from her shoulders when he doesn't reject it. She patters off to give her cousin and sister matching boxes of rice crackers, and he stares at her impossibly tiny feet. 

The Main House and those close to it do not leave often, except for business. There is an ever-present threat to the jealously guarded secrets of the Hyuuga. It's lucky that all of Hinata's classmates are excellent _shinobi_, or she wouldn't be allowed alone in their company. Himself excluded, for now.

"D'you know," says the shadow dropping down from the ceiling, "that sometimes your eyes go _sharingan_ around her?" In her arms is a fluffy grey ball with icy blue eyes. They both watch him with a bladed edge of amused superiority.

"And?"

"And I wanna know what you think you're going to find. She has nothing to hide, wouldn't know how, really." The cat swishes its tail in agreement. There's something unnervingly familiar about it, the way the girl is holding it.

"That cat," he starts.

"Hinata gave her to me. Some old lady's cat had kittens, and gave Hinata one for all the times she's returned Fluffy-hime." She holds her cat up to her face. "Her mama is a cat that once evaded Team Kakashi for three whole hours. Hoshiakari-hime is a _ninja_ cat."

"So I guess that cat's line is cursed to have owners they don't like."

"We were playing tag," she says carelessly, setting her kitten on the ground. "I'm going to get my rice crackers now." She slips away, kitten padding silently after her. They both throw one last look at him before they disappear into a hallway.

* * *

He trains with Hinata now, under the watchful eyes of Hanabi and Hoshi-_hime_. Hinata is patient, reserved, and above all not a genius. She is content to throw the same attacks at him until he is certain his muscles have remembered how to block it. And he tells her how to improve the attacks she uses. She has no need to become a great _ninja_, if she will live the rest of her life within a gilded cage, so she doesn't grow bored or frustrated doing this. She is capable enough, he supposes, but she can't bring herself to seriously hurt anyone. She is diplomatic and refined and likable. Her family is slowly coming out of its cloister, and they know they will need these assets more than her _shinobi_ skills. Even if barely making _chuunin_ on her third try is still a sore disappointment. 


	2. Chapter 2

"S-sakura-san?" Hinata hates herself for sounding like a twelve year old, but really, there is no comfortable way to open this. "Do you know if… if Sasuke-san is… is—"

"Gay?" Sakura has had enough people ask her this that she recognizes the signs almost immediately. That now even Hinata is wondering is just too funny. "Don't actually know. Are you interested?"

"I think… I think my family doesn't want him to be," she admits softly. Sakura is looking at her like the answers will appear in black ink on her skin.

"You mean they want you… and _him_?"

"Hianta could set any man straight," chirrups Ino, twining herself about her friends in greeting. "Who are we talking about?"

"Uchiha Sasuke," Sakura informs her shortly.

"The Hyuuga live as much in the past as they do in the future," Hinata manages to get out. "This would be a golden opportunity for them, the Uchiha beholden to the Hyuuga, and the promise of a generation stronger than me. I think it would be a convenience if they could persuade him… but-but some think that… that he doesn't like girls that way."

"Probably not," the blonde agrees easily. "Even when we were twelve, I _was _the hottest thing this side of the desert."

"Hey, he turned me down too," snaps the other.

"And for what, a transsexual freak with some serious fetish issues. It'd be perfectly natural if he were still questioning," she responds blithely.

Sakura purses her lips and decides that the conversation needs to take a turn. However comfortable Ino is with her sexuality and everybody else's, Hinata is disproportionately uncomfortable with it.

"Shall we go for ramen, or did you have some place different in mind?"

Neji improves with every mission he took, she can see it. He is matching Lee blow for blow, and her noodles are growing cold, dangling from her chopsticks, as she watches them. Sakura flinches at each dull thud of flesh, no doubt imagining all the healing she will have to do. Hinata is trying to persuade her body not to indulge in hormones, and she thinks maybe she can convince herself it's working. Her lunch falls forgotten to the ground when Neji takes a weighted foot to his ribcage. She doesn't think to wonder about what could distract him so much he didn't dodge or brace himself for the hit. All that matters at the moment is pushing away the edges of his _keikogi_ to carefully press her fingers into the bruising white skin and let the green glow of chakra seep into his body. She finds chakra burns on the marble of his chest, but says nothing, letting the reproach in her eyes speak for her. He is stately and arrogant and if he thinks he can fight her father and then Rock Lee without any reparations, the humiliation he suffers is more punishment than anything she can say. Sakura lets her be, because Hinata knows better than anyone else the kind of damage the Juuken can do. Sakura pulls her energetic boyfriend away, thinking of all the things she might do to shut him up. She tells him any other girl would be jealous he's devoting that much energy to another man, teammate or not. She only half hears him declaring to prove his love, but the dragging goes much easier.

She has the loose sleeves off his arms faster than he can blink, and the scarlet dotting his skin is glaringly obvious and she does what she can without asking. Her hands caress as they cure, something she doesn't realize she does, but he is all too aware of it. Finally he can take no more and stills her hands under his own.

His hands burn hers with an intensity that has nothing to do with chakra.

* * *

He bathes just before sunset, so the maids must wait till he is done to light the tapers in the aged bathhouse. Neji is somewhere, and Sasuke has been behaving well enough, or taking enough of Hanabi's hits, that they don't believe he will be able to do anything in a bathtub. He enjoys this moment of privacy, he can't see much in the bloody light of a dying day, but he knows where everything is now, and he'd rather not look at himself while he washes. He is drying himself when he hears the whisper of slippers outside. He doesn't much care; god knows how many people have seen him naked; on purpose, by accident, because they were sealing away his life… The horrified gasp identifies it as the Heiress herself, and the door slams.

She is blushing furiously, knowing that Sasuke still has his fangirls, knowing that they would kill her if they knew what she has just seen. The last Uchiha, white jade skin illuminated by the red, red sun and her wavering lamp, water beading from his hair sliding down his back. She's still just a teenager, but she hurriedly stamps down the thought of licking off every drop. She can not afford to behave in any unseemly manner. Even if her family is toying with idea of adding Sasuke to the gene pool.

The door opens, and Sasuke, _yukata_ belted loosely, steps out.

"Bath's free," he states blandly, and heads back to his room. He hears the door close, and tries not to think about how his eyes drank in the swell of her breasts peeking out from the edge of her _yukata_, the dark shadow above the slit of her legs, the sight of her toes curling as she shrank herself into another heated blush.

She slides into the hot water, lets it steal the heat from her burning red skin. She's no stranger to desire; she feels a twinge of jealousy when she sees Ino and Shikamaru walking a careful distance apart after they've ducked into the archive room or the furious crimson stain on Lee's cheeks after Sakura has taken him into her mouth against a training post. She doesn't need to be Akamaru to know Kiba has been getting laid regularly, because he walks with a satisfied swing to his step, and if possible, the look of him is more feral than before. She thinks it might be Naruto, and if so, that would explain why no one's caught them. Kiba would like it rough, Naruto rougher, and no bed is going to hold up against the two of them together. She knows what it is to crave sensations, until now she hadn't thought about who would be on the other side. The feel of Neji's chest coupled with the sight of Sasuke's body would drive any woman to blasphemy, and it's not fair that she must be the untouchable princess in this story.

She stays too long in the bath, trying to wash away unclean thoughts, and she has to run to get to her rooms. She nearly slams into Neji, but quick reflexes on her part, and quicker reflexes on his keep, the damage to a minimum. Drops of water pool around her feet and she bows in apology before darting into her rooms, flicking cool beads from the ends of her hair; sharp stinging sensations against the sudden fire on his skin. He can not stay like this, feeling her presence through a fragile paper door, knowing how the cotton material clings to all the sinful places, knowing that she's peeling it away to pull on a silk_hadajuban_.

* * *

They want a formal dinner tonight, acknowledging him as a guest for the first time. The_kimono_ he wears is a dull blue that reflects black; it was in the assortment of things someone brought back from the Uchiha household. He kneels on the _tatami_, waiting for the rest of his hosts to seat themselves. The little girl is in smoky green, bamboo shoots growing from the hem. The other wears pale pink silk blossoming with _ume_ flowers. He thinks the _obi_ might be the same color as the _zori_ Neji was mending before.

He is watching her cousin watch her. The Hyuuga genius can't seem to tear his eyes away from the Heiress for very long. He glances at her every now and then, wondering if she is really that fascinating. He turns his gaze just in time to see her delicately consume a piece of squid, mouth working to chew and swallow. Suddenly, his own rice bowl is more enthralling than watching Neji make an idiot of himself. Someone sets a glass down for him, pouring sweet liquor over the chunk of ice.

"_Umeshu_," Hiashi informs him blandly, marking the Uchiha's eyes flicker to his elder daughter and then to the blooming plum tree decorating the_maemigoro_. The Hokage may have been right. It will be easier to keep him now that part of his goals has been reached.

Sasuke sips the liquor carefully, rolling it over his tongue, tasting every nuance of flavor, still gazing at the Heiress from behind charcoal lashes.

"At the very least, Uchiha Sasuke, I hope the House of Hyuuga has not offered you so great a slight you are unhappy here."

"If anything, I worry more about offending the Hyuuga," he snaps politely, like a wire taut between two trees.

"They will learn to accept that a person's heart can change with time. Isn't that right, my nephew?"

Neji nods deferentially, implacably cool mask in place, but the corner of his mouth betrays a slight twitch.

"All of us do shameful things for the most important beliefs in our hearts." Hiashi looks toward his daughters with regret and pride. "I would not be displeased if the Uchiha and the Hyuuga were one once more."

There is a clatter, chopsticks clinking against bowls; Hinata pulls Hanabi's sleeve away from the brazier holding a teapot. Hanabi is staring at her father, even though her eyes are fixed on the slowly spreading stain of Hinata's _umeshu_.

Hiashi ignores his daughters, even though he is still looking at them. "A strong leader who doesn't care what lines are crossed or who is offended, for the Hyuuga and for the Village. We can not be a clan if the ties between us are severed so easily."

He has escaped into the garden, an hour to himself while his keeper tells what little there is to know of Uchiha Sasuke. He finds he is not alone, but he doesn't really care. The Heiress is about as good conversational company as the aesthetically pleasing dead tree in the corner.

"Do you want to be a_ninja _again, Sasuke?" she asks of the silence, surprising him a little. "Do you miss going outside the walls of the village, seeing things and people, being able to _do_ things?"

"Seen enough, done too much," is all she gets in reply.

She stares down at her feet, abashed. Sasuke notes the near seamless repairs done to the brocade of the _hanao_. He imagines Neji using the _byakugan_ to thread the straps through the soles.

"You want to be sent out on C ranked missions?" he asks, a modicum of guilt plucking at him.

"I want to do something. Until I can fulfill my role among the Hyuuga, all I do is wait here and watch the other _shinobi_ being dragged back bleeding from another incomplete mission. Neji is the only active_ninja_ who knows the _Hakke Rokujūyon Shō_ or _Hakkeshō Kaiten_, the secret techniques of the _soke. _Surely the pride of the Hyuuga is not worth the lives that might be saved. I want to protect it all; my family, my friends, all of you."

Maybe there is something going for the Hyuuga Heiress. Something in him is reacting to her, it makes him want to help her, or maybe it's the alcohol.

"You can't even protect yourself from your own family," he says anyway, because he's Uchiha Sasuke and he'd be damned if he were nice to a girl.

"You'd be amazed what a _ninja_ is capable of when she has something she wants to cherish." She smiles at him serenely, like she knows something he has no comprehension of, except that he does, because he had a dream once, and he's only fulfilled part of his goal.

"And you know how strong _shinobi_ who do nothing but destroy can become?"

"I have my _nindo_. I must grow to defend it; that is why we hold on to them so closely. We learn our weaknesses by clinging to what gives us the strength to fight. Surely Naruto has taught you that much."

The problem, Hanabi informs her starlight cat, is that they live in a house of paper and decorum, and well, some of them can see through that. Some of them can read lips from the other end of the building, when they try hard enough, see the skin under someone's jaw pulse in time with a heartbeat, see a hundred 'tells' that betray what one's face can't. Hanabi has watched her sister enough to know every last little tic. And it's bad enough that their father wants her to marry Uchiha Sasuke, and it's worse that the last Uchiha would probably okay with that. But what's really not sitting well is the fact that Hinata herself probably wouldn't mind right now, because being trapped in this house has obviously driven her stark raving batty.

* * *

He hands Neji a letter to deliver to his masters, outlining in black and parchment his price. Neji scans it quickly, in front of him, and narrows his eyes, veins still swollen with energy. They reflect nothing but the morning sun, and the Hyuuga genius takes the scroll and his leave.

It's Hinata that returns the scroll to him hours later, eyes firmly fixed on the ground, cheeks pink with flattered scandal. Either she peeked too, or her family let her look at the price tag they are putting on her. He unrolls it to find stipulations added, but none of his are touched. He grabs her wrist and demands to be taken to her family.

In front of all these soul piercing eyes he signs his blood and waits for her and her father to do the same.

* * *

It is too finished. I just don't like playing the rating game on this site. If I have to tell you how this all works, you're not old enough to be reading smut.

community (dot) livejournal (dot) com (slash) inked (underscore) in (underscore) purple (slash) 12897 (dot) html


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